My girlfriend found a recipe somewhere for chicken breasts stuff with prosciutto and cream cheese in a tarragon sauce. I don’t know where she found it, but it sounded like a good idea. However, I decided to revamp it a little bit. I switched out the cream cheese for a garlic and herb cheese spread I found in the dairy case to give the filling a little more flavor. Then I substituted oregano for the tarragon. I figured it wouldn’t make that much of a difference since it was just being used to flavor the sauce.
I started out by cutting 3 chicken breasts in half to create 6 very thin pieces. I then proceeded to pound those out a bit more until they were about 1/4 inch thick. To make cleanup a little easier I laid these all out on some wax paper. On top of each breast I places one piece of Prosciutto and a tablespoon of the garlic and herb cheese. After they were all topped I rolled them up and used some toothpicks to secure the ends.
I wanted to make sure that the chicken got some good color on it so I covered them with paper towels for about 15 minutes. I then warmed up 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Once the oil was ready I dropped in the chicken. You should definitely have one of those splatter guards ready, because the oil goes flying everywhere when you place the chicken in the pan. If you don’t, you’re going to be doing some major cleanup afterwards. The chicken was browned on all sides after 10 minutes, but I did not think that it was even cooked in the middle. I lowered the heat and left the chicken in the pan for another 10 minutes on low.
Using my handy probe thermometer I check the chicken’s temperature and it was right on the money, so I took it out of the pan and set it on a plate to rest. I didn’t have to worry about keeping it warm because I was going to return it to the pan once the sauce was finished.
The sauce was super easy to make. I drained out all of the extra oil left from frying the chicken and I was left with a bunch of flavorful brown bits. To the pan I added 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of flour and whisked them together forming a quick roux. I let it cook for a minute or so to ensure it wouldn’t taste like flour. At this point the recipe called for a half of a cup of wine to deglaze the pan, but seeing as that I can’t stand wine, I substituted a half of a cup solution that was half water and half apple cider vinegar. Worked great. I then whisked in 2 tablespoons of fresh oregano and a cup of chicken broth. About 5 minutes later I had a wonderfully flavorful sauce that didn’t even need salt.
I added the chicken back to the pan and moved the heat down to low. The chicken needed a thin coating of sauce I thought, so I turned each piece a few times in the sauce. A few minutes later it was time to eat. Luckily, I remembered to take a picture before it was all eaten:
You can click on it to see a larger image.
For those of you that are interested, an ingredients list is below.
3 Chicken breast, sliced and pounded to 1/4 inch
6 Prosciutto pieces, sliced paper-thin
6 Tablespoons of garlic and herb cheese spread
3 Tablespoons olive oil
1 Tablespoon flour
1 Tablespoon butter
1 Cup chicken broth
2 Tablespoons fresh oregano
Salt
Pepper
Toothpicks
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